American businesses selling out to overseas companies for quick profits. Technology boom, which while nice, each tech generation will lessen people powered workforce. In turn fewer jobs with increasing population.

Building a dependent lower class on the government that is now generations deep and proud of it.

For profit colleges.

Now, the Y generation did not build it. But I do not see them as the group to stop it.

America is probably declining in terms of geopolitical influence, but I'm not sure if that's really the best way to judge a civilization. If we're all riding horses again in 50 years, I'll say we declined.

It's kinda funny to me, to see what the US has created and how people perceive it. We've created a nation with one of the highest standards of living in the world. Where the overwhelming majority never actually experiences true poverty or hunger. A nation where those in "Poverty" still own such pleasures as cars, TVs with hundreds of channels, Xbox/PS3, smartphones, etc. A nation where everyone has health care no matter what. We have systems to care for others who cannot care for themselves.

There's very little actual poverty in America. Not true poverty. Those in poverty in America live like royalty compared to some other parts of the world. Yet all we ever hear is people bitching about other Americans getting things they don't think those other people deserve. You hear more bitching of that type these days, than you hear about what we don't have. Yet we don't stop and think about what a good thing it is that Americans don't have to bitch about having unclean drinking water, or moldy and rotten food, or lack of electricity, or no health care at all, or actual real government oppression.

Nope, we sit here on our thrones, and type into our smartphones that have internet access nearly everywhere we go, while enjoying a diversity of cheap food, clean water, organized infrastructure, etc. While bitching about poor people getting a couple hundred dollars worth of free food.

America has become a nation of selfish unappreciative assholes who bitch all day while never realizing how easy of a life they live compared with much of the rest of the world.

I'm solidly in the top half or the optimism spectrum on this poll, but...

* Our Seniors in Civil Engineering are working on a capstone project that would bring reliable safe drinking water to a community, but they would still have to drive to the treatment plant to truck water to their homes. In other words, even after a major upgrade to their water system, they still would not have clean running water in their homes.

* The bottom 15% of Americans only have health care in the life and death situations or when they can get access to free/subsidized health care. 45 million Americans.

* We are importing our scientific and engineering brain power. Native-born Americans make up an increasingly smaller share of the students in graduate programs in science and engineering. Our K-12 educational system has been lagging behind for decades. That just isn't going to lead to a world leading economy in the long term.

* There will never again be opportunity for the average unskilled, an uneducated American to support above the poverty line. We have a metric shit ton of these people. The poverty line for a family of 4 is around $23K, while the median individual income is around $27K. When grouped into households, 15% are below the poverty line for this $23K benchmark.